Zaki Jackson was 6 months old when doctors diagnosed him with a form of epilepsy so severe that it sparked as many as 250 seizures a day.

For years his mom, Heather Jackson, feared for his life. “He would stop breathing,” she told NBC chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman. “All the air leaves his lungs and he does not take another breath until that seizure is over.”

After 10 years and 17 medications, Zaki wasn’t getting any better. Then, finally, his doctor wrote a prescription for a medication that calmed the electrical storms in Zaki’s brain. The surprise was that it wasn’t for a standard anti-seizure medication -- it was a prescription for marijuana.

Zaki’s case isn’t unusual as it may seem. Eighteen states, plus Washington, D.C., allow use of medical marijuana. A number of them provide prescriptions to children, with parental supervision, to treat a host of ills, ranging from autism to cancer to seizures.

Critics, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, argue that the remedy hasn’t been clinically tested in kids and might have some long-term ramifications.

Zaki’s parents were surprised at first and a bit taken aback. “We are Christians,” Jackson said. “We are conservative. And we’re using medical marijuana. That’s a kind of big hump for people to get over. Despite the stigma associated with cannabis, we owed it to Zaki to give it a try.”

Jackson said the results were immediate and stunning. “I probably stared at him for a good three hours after his first dose and then I fell asleep. I didn’t feel any seizures after his first dose,” his mother said.

In fact, it’s been eight months since Zaki’s last seizure and he's finally starting to do normal kid activities, like ride a swing.

Zaki's pot is provided specifically for him by a team of brothers who legally grow medical marijuana. It has been bred to have low levels of TCH, but higher levels of another cannabinoid called cannabidiol, or CBD.

Amanda Bynes wore a long aqua wig, false eyelashes and black sweatpants and a tank top for a brief court appearance Tuesday on allegations that she chucked a marijuana bong out the window of her 36th-floor Manhattan apartment.

The 27-year-old actress did not speak during the hearing that lasted mere minutes, but she drew a throng of photographers and television cameras as she entered and left the criminal court building in lower Manhattan. Neither she nor her attorney spoke to reporters outside court.

Bynes was arrested May 23 after building officials at her midtown apartment called police to complain that she was rolling a joint and smoking pot in the lobby.

Officers went to her apartment, where they said they saw heavy smoke and a bong sitting on the kitchen counter. They said she tossed the bong out the window in front of them, according to prosecutors. A day later, in her first court appearance, she wore a disheveled blond wig.